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Does Religion Condemn Homosexuality?

By Michael Bronski

…ups, such as Toronto-based Salaam and US-based Al-Fatiha, and by a growing number of Muslim scholars in order to push back against the most conservative Islamic voices and open a space for Muslim gender and sexual minorities. The Internet also provides a vital resource for LGBT Muslims seeking to develop and put forward their own religious perspectives about same-sex desires and identities. Where Leviticus is concerned, only anal sex between men i…

Anti-Gay Violence Rages in Gambia; Conservative ‘Complementarity’ Confab; Coming Out in Iraq Can Be Death Sentence; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…a picture on Facebook showing him at a social function with gay people. According to Gay Star News, “The church charged the minister with socialising and mixing with gay people. It cited 1 Timothy 6:11 in the Bible, ‘flee from all this, and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance and gentleness’.” According to Mambaonline, Olivier is himself gay. “It boils down to one thing – homophobia toward the gay community. That’s why they dis…

7 Women Scholars On the Gender Divide in Religious Studies, the Power of Mentors, and Leading While Female

By Rebecca Barrett-Fox

…ldless. LEADING WHILE FEMALE Elaine Howard Ecklund: Even with an increased number of women working in the sociology of religion, there aren’t many women who are named chairs in universities. The number of women in the sociology of religion who hold tenure track jobs, earn tenure, get published, and get cited is not changing as fast as we would expect, giving that we are seeing gender parity in terms of who earns a graduate degree. There are conver…

‘My Name is Legion’: Sources and Forces of White Supremacy in the U.S.

By R. Drew Smith

…hate group and white supremacist group content has skyrocketed—even as the numbers of those groups have themselves noticeably increased. For example, the number of known hate groups is reported to have increased from roughly 600 in the year 2000 to 930 in 2014. Moreover, major television networks such as Fox TV have ushered hate content and white supremacist content into the media mainstream, featuring racialized rhetoric that ranges from disparag…

Religious Leaders Need ‘Empty the Pews’ Which Chronicles the Darker Side of the ‘Nones’ Phenomenon

By Kaya Oakes

…the damage—or “nurtured insanity,” as Frank Schaeffer calls it in his foreword—fundamentalist Christianity has done to queer people just based on the number who have left. But it also demonstrates why Christian denominations that trot out their “welcoming and affirming” credentials may need to do more; they may want to spend some serious time listening to new members who have arrived from a fundamentalist background. While there’s doubtlessly a gr…

Francis Must Make Changes to Have a Real Effect

By Patricia Miller

…no more are going to church than during Benedict’s papacy. In Gallicho’s words it takes “nerve” to point this out. But these numbers are key because they’re about Catholics’ relationship to and practice of their faith, which is the heart of the matter, not about the personal popularity of Pope Francis. And on the issue of mass attendance, if that isn’t a good marker of how successful Francis is in reviving the church, what is? Is Gallicho predict…

The Vatican v. Protestant Free Thinkers

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…, represented was the triumph of a new kind of mathematical science, where numbers and computation were esteemed in a whole new way. Copernicus, be sure to recall, did not yet have access to the telescope, so he was basing a number of his computations on things he could not see. In this brave new world, then, the scientists were also casting their “faith in things not seen.” It’s just that what they “saw” was perceived to run counter to the Roman…

After More Mass Shootings It’s Time to Call Out White Supremacy in the Pews

By Peter Laarman

…what’s going on, but too few seem capable of saying it. We now have a fair number of political and civic leaders who are willing to say the word trauma and talk about the all-pervasive violence in this culture, not to mention the extent of mental disturbance and the fact that American civilians have more assault rifles in their possession than does the U.S. military. All well and good. But we have too few leaders who will talk about the deeper roo…

Mike Johnson isn’t Just Your Average Christian Right Avatar — He’s Influenced by Fringe Movements Unfamiliar to Most Political Analysts

By Annika Brockschmidt

…d about his driving ideology, Johnson cites a biblical worldview which, according to religion scholar Christian Right expert Julie Ingersoll, is a revealing answer: “This term by itself can mean a number of things. For example most Christians would say they look to the wisdom of the Bible to understand their identity and purpose in relationship to God. But combined with Johnson’s statement that if anyone wants to know what he thinks about any issu…

The Progress of Christ in Commercial America: A Review of Chris Lehmann’s The Money Cult

By Peter Laarman

…delights in surfacing little-known factoids. These include the remarkable number of commercial hucksters who were preachers or else preachers’ kids (e.g., Richard Bolles of What Color is Your Parachute? fame—a former Episcopal priest) and the equally remarkable number of notable preachers who had strong commercial instincts and/or commercial roots (ranging from 18th-century superstar evangelist George Whitefield to 19th-century revivalist giant C…